The "Acta
"contain the pravxei" tou' ...
jIwavnnou tou' qeolovgou Prochorus, who professes to be one of the Seventy Disciples, one
of the Seven Deacons of Jerusalem (Acts 6:5), and a pupil of St. John; and
fragments of the perivodoi jIwavnnou, "the Wanderings of John," by Leucius Charinus, a friend and pupil of
John. The former work is a religious romance, written about 400 years after the
death of John; the latter is assigned by Zahn to an author in Asia Minor before
160, and probably before 140; it uses the fourth as well as the Synoptical
Gospels, and so far has some apologetic value. See p. cxlviii.

Max Bonnet, the
French philologist, promises a new critical edition of the Acts of John. See E.
Leroux's "Revue critique," 1880, p. 449.

This
pseudo-Johannean Apocalypse purports to have been written shortly after the
ascension of Christ, by St. John, on Mount Tabor. It exists in MS. from the
ninth century, and was first edited by A. Birch, 1804.

On the legends of
St. John comp. Mrs. Jameson:
Sacred and Legendary Art, I. 157-172, fifth edition.

III. Biographical and Critical.

Francis Trench:
Life and Character of St. John the Evangelist. London, 1850.

The Literature on
the Gospel of John and its genuineness, from 1792 to 1875 (from Evanson to
Luthardt), is given with unusual fulness and accuracy by Dr. Caspar René Gregory (an American scholar), in
an appendix to his translation of Luthardt'sSt. John, the Author of
the Fourth Gospel. Edinb. 1875, pp. 283-360. Comp. also the very careful
lists of Dr. Ezra Abbot (down to
1869) in the article John, Gospel of, in the Am. ed. of Smith's
"Dict. of the Bible," I. 1437-1439.

The dates assigned
to the composition of the Fourth Gospel by these opponents vary from 110 to
170, but the best scholars among them are more and more forced to retreat from
170 (Baur's date) to 130 (Keim), or to the very beginning of the second century
(110). This is fatal to their theory; for at that time many of the personal
friends and pupils of John must have been still living to prevent a literary
fiction from being generally accepted in the church as a genuine work of the
apostle.

Reuss (in his
Théologie johannique, 1879, in
the sixth part of his great work, "La Bible" and in the Sixth edition
of his Geschichte der heil. Schriften
N. T., 1887,
pp. 249 sqq.) leaves the question undecided, though inclining against the
Johannean authorship. Sabatier,
who had formerly defended the authenticity (in his Essai sur
les sources de la vie de Jésus, 1866), follows the steps of Reuss,
and comes to a negative conclusion (in his art. Jean in Lichtenberger's
"Encycl. des Sciences Relig.," Tom. VII., Paris, 1880, pp. 173 sqq.).

Weisse
(1836), Schweizer (1841), Weizsäcker
(1857, 1859, 1862, 1886), Hase (in his Geschichte
Jesu, 1875,
while in his earlier writings he had defended the genuineness), and Renan (1863, 1867, and 1879) admit
genuine portions in the Fourth Gospel, but differ among themselves as to the
extent. Some defend the genuineness of the discourses, but reject the miracles.
Renan, on the contrary, favors the historical portions, but rejects the
discourses of Christ, in a special discussion in the 13th ed. of his Vie
de Jésus, pp. 477 sqq. He changed his view again in his
L'église chrétienne, 1879, pp. 47 sqq. "Ce qui paraît le plus
probable," he says, "c'est qu'un disciple de l'apôtre,
dépositaire de plusieurs de ses souvenirs, se crut autorisé à parler en son nom
et à écrire, vingt-cinq ou trente ans aprés sa mort, ce que l'on regrettait
qu'il n'eût pas lui-même fixé de son vivant." He is disposed to ascribe the
composition to the "Presbyter John" (whose very existence is
doubtful) and to Aristion, two Ephesian disciples of John the Apostle. In
characterizing the discourses in the Gospel of John he shows his utter
incapacity of appreciating its spirit. Matthew
Arnold(God and the Bible, p. 248) conjectures that the Ephesian
presbyters composed the Gospel with the aid of materials furnished by John.

It should be
remarked that Baur and his followers, and Renan, while they reject the
authenticity of the Fourth Gospel, strongly defend the Johannean origin of the
Apocalypse, as one of the certain documents of the apostolic age. But Keim, by
denying the whole tradition of John's sojourn at Ephesus, destroys the
foundation of Baur's theory.

Peter, the Jewish apostle of
authority, and Paul, the Gentile apostle of freedom, had done their work on
earth before the destruction of Jerusalem—had done it for their age and for all
ages to come; had done it, and by the influence of their writings are doing it
still, in a manner that can never be superseded. Both were master-builders, the
one in laying the foundation, the other in rearing the superstructure, of the
church of Christ, against which the gates of Hades can never prevail.

But there remained a most
important additional work to be done, a work of union and consolidation. This
was reserved for the apostle of love, the bosom-friend of Jesus, who had become
his most perfect reflection so far as any human being can reflect the ideal of
divine-human purity and holiness. John was not a missionary or a man of action,
like Peter and Paul. He did little, so far as we know, for the outward spread
of Christianity, but all the more for the inner life and growth of Christianity
where it was already established. He has nothing to say about the government,
the forms, and rites of the visible church (even the name does not occur in his
Gospel and first Epistle), but all the more about the spiritual substance of
the church—the vital union of believers with Christ and the brotherly communion
of believers among themselves. He is at once the apostle, the evangelist, and
the seer, of the new covenant. He lived to the close of the first century, that
he might erect on the foundation and superstructure of the apostolic age the
majestic dome gilded by the light of the new heaven.

He had to wait in silent
meditation till the church was ripe for his sublime teaching. This is intimated
by the mysterious word of our Lord to Peter with reference to John: "If I
will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?"559 No doubt the Lord did come in the terrible judgment of Jerusalem.
John outlived it personally, and his type of doctrine and character will
outlive the earlier stages of church history (anticipated and typified by Peter
and Paul) till the final coming of the Lord. In that wider sense he tarries even
till now, and his writings, with their unexplored depths and heights still wait
for the proper interpreter. The best comes last. In the vision of Elijah on
Mount Horeb, the strong wind that rent the mountains and brake in pieces the
rocks, and the earthquake, and the fire preceded the still small voice of
Jehovah.560 The owl of
Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, begins its flight at twilight. The storm of
battle prepares the way for the feast of peace. The great warrior of the
apostolic age already sounded the keynote of love which was to harmonize the
two sections of Christendom; and John only responded to Paul when he revealed
the inmost heart of the supreme being by the profoundest of all definitions:
"God is love."561

John in
the Gospels.

John was a son (probably the
younger son) of Zebedee and Salome, and a brother of the elder James, who
became the protomartyr of the apostles.562 He may have
been about ten years younger than Jesus, and as, according to the unanimous
testimony of antiquity, he lived till the reign of Trajan, i.e., till
after 98, he must have attained an age of over ninety years. He was a fisherman
by trade, probably of Bethsaida in Galilee (like Peter, Andrew, and Philip).
His parents seem to have been in comfortable circumstances. His father kept
hired servants; his mother belonged to the noble band of women who followed
Jesus and supported him with their means, who purchased spices to embalm him,
who were the last at the cross and the first at the open tomb. John himself was
acquainted with the high priest, and owned a house in Jerusalem or Galilee,
into which he received the mother of our Lord.563

He was a cousin of Jesus,
according to the flesh, from his mother, a sister of Mary.564 This relationship, together with the enthusiasm of youth and the
fervor of his emotional nature, formed the basis of his intimacy with the Lord.

He had no rabbinical training,
like Paul, and in the eyes of the Jewish scholars he was, like Peter and the other
Galilaean disciples, an "unlearned and ignorant man."565 But he passed through the preparatory school of John the Baptist
who summed up his prophetic mission in the testimony to Jesus as the "Lamb
of God that taketh away the sin of the world," a testimony which he
afterwards expanded in his own writings. It was this testimony which led him to
Jesus on the banks of the Jordan in that memorable interview of which, half a
century afterwards, he remembered the very hour.566 He was not only one of the Twelve, but the chosen of the chosen
Three. Peter stood out more prominently before the public as the friend of the
Messiah; John was known in the private circle as the friend of Jesus.567 Peter always looked at the official character of Christ, and
asked what he and the other apostles should do; John gazed steadily at the
person of Jesus, and was intent to learn what the Master said. They differed as
the busy Martha, anxious to serve, and the pensive Mary, contented to learn.
John alone, with Peter and his brother James, witnessed the scene of the
transfiguration and of Gethsemane—the highest exaltation and the deepest
humiliation in the earthly life of our Lord. He leaned on his breast at the
last Supper and treasured those wonderful farewell discourses in his heart for
future use. He followed him to the court of Caiaphas. He alone of all the
disciples was present at the crucifixion, and was intrusted by the departing
Saviour with the care of his mother. This was a scene of unique delicacy and
tenderness: the Mater
dolorosa and
the beloved disciple gazing at the cross, the dying Son and Lord uniting them
in maternal and filial love. It furnishes the type of those heaven-born
spiritual relationships, which are deeper and stronger than those of blood and
interest. As John was the last at the cross, so he was also, next to Mary
Magdalene, the first of the disciples who, outrunning even Peter, looked into
the open tomb on the resurrection morning; and he first recognized the risen
Lord when he appeared to the disciples on the shore of the lake of Galilee.568

He seems to have been the
youngest of the apostles, as he long outlived them all; he certainly was the
most gifted and the most favored. He had a religious genius of the highest
order—not indeed for planting, but for watering; not for outward action and
aggressive work, but for inward contemplation and insight into the mystery of
Christ's person and of eternal life in him. Purity and simplicity of character,
depth and ardor of affection, and a rare faculty of spiritual perception and
intuition, were his leading traits, which became ennobled and consecrated by
divine grace.

There are no violent changes
reported in John's history; he grew silently and imperceptibly into the communion
of his Lord and conformity to his example; he was in this respect the antipode
of Paul. He heard more and saw more, but spoke less, than the other disciples.
He absorbed his deepest sayings, which escaped the attention of others; and
although he himself did not understand them at first, he pondered them in his
heart till the Holy Spirit illuminated them. His intimacy with Mary must also
have aided him in gaining an interior view of the mind and heart of his Lord.
He appears throughout as the beloved disciple, in closest intimacy and in
fullest sympathy with the Lord.569

The Son
of Thunder and the Beloved Disciple.

There is an apparent
contradiction between the Synoptic and the Johannean picture of John, as there
is between the Apocalypse and the fourth Gospel; but on closer inspection it is
only the twofold aspect of one and the same character. We have a parallel in
the Peter of the Gospels and the Peter of his Epistles: the first youthful,
impulsive, hasty, changeable, the other matured, subdued, mellowed, refined by
divine grace.

In the Gospel of Mark, John
appears as a Son of Thunder (Boanerges).570 This surname, given to him and to his elder brother by our
Saviour, was undoubtedly an epithet of honor and foreshadowed his future
mission, like the name Peter given to Simon. Thunder to the Hebrews was the
voice of God.571 It conveys the
idea of ardent temper, great strength and vehemence of character whether for
good or for evil, according to the motive and aim. The same thunder which
terrifies does also purify the air and fructify the earth with its accompanying
showers of rain. Fiery temper under the control of reason and in the service of
truth is as great a power of construction as the same temper, uncontrolled and
misdirected, is a power of destruction. John's burning zeal and devotion needed
only discipline and discretion to become a benediction and inspiration to the
church in all ages.

In their early history the sons
of Zebedee misunderstood the difference between the law and the gospel, when,
in an outburst of holy indignation against a Samaritan village which refused to
receive Jesus, they were ready, like Elijah of old, to call consuming fire from
heaven.572 But when, some
years afterwards, John went to Samaria to confirm the new converts, he called
down upon them the fire of divine life and light, the gift of the Holy Spirit.573 The same mistaken zeal for his Master was at the bottom of his
intolerance towards those who performed a good work in the name of Christ, but
outside of the apostolic circle.574 The desire of the two brothers, in which their mother shared, for
the highest positions in the Messianic kingdom, likewise reveals both their
strength and their weakness, a noble ambition to be near Christ, though it be
near the fire and the sword, yet an ambition that was not free from selfishness
and pride, which deserved the rebuke of our Lord, who held up before them the
prospect of the baptism of blood.575

All this is quite consistent
with the writings of John. He appears there by no means as a soft and
sentimental, but as a positive and decided character. He had no doubt a sweet
and lovely disposition, but at the same time a delicate sensibility, ardent
feelings, and strong convictions. These traits are by no means incompatible. He
knew no compromise, no division of loyalty. A holy fire burned within him,
though he was moved in the deep rather than on the surface. In the Apocalypse,
the thunder rolls loud and mighty against the enemies of Christ and his
kingdom, while on the other hand there are in the same book episodes of rest
and anthems, of peace and joy, and a description of the heavenly Jerusalem,
which could have proceeded only from the beloved disciple. In the Gospel and
the Epistles of John, we feel the same power, only subdued and restrained. He
reports the severest as well as the sweetest discourses of the Saviour, according
as he speaks to the enemies of the truth, or in the circle of the disciples. No
other evangelist gives us such a profound inside-view of the antagonism between
Christ and the Jewish hierarchy, and of the growing intensity of that hatred
which culminated in the bloody counsel; no apostle draws a sharper line of
demarcation between light and darkness, truth and falsehood, Christ and
Antichrist, than John. His Gospel and Epistles move in these irreconcilable
antagonisms. He knows no compromise between God and Baal. With what holy horror
does he speak of the traitor, and the rising rage of the Pharisees against
their Messiah! How severely does he, in
the words of the Lord, attack the unbelieving Jews with their murderous
designs, as children of the devil! And,
in his Epistles, he terms every one who dishonors his Christian profession a
liar; every one who hates his brother a murderer; every one who wilfully sins a
child of the devil; and he earnestly warns against teachers who deny the
mystery of the incarnation, as Antichrists, and he forbids even to salute them.576 The measure of his love of Christ was the measure of his hatred
of antichrist. For hatred is inverted love. Love and hatred are one and the
same passion, only revealed in opposite directions. The same sun gives light
and heat to the living, and hastens the decay of the dead.

Christian art has so far well
understood the double aspect of John by representing him with a face of womanly
purity and tenderness, but not weakness, and giving him for his symbol a bold
eagle soaring with outspread wings above the clouds.577

The
Apocalypse and the Fourth Gospel.

A proper appreciation of John's
character as thus set forth removes the chief difficulty of ascribing the
Apocalypse and the fourth Gospel to one and the same writer.578 The temper is the same in both: a noble, enthusiastic nature,
capable of intense emotions of love and hatred, but with the difference between
vigorous manhood and ripe old age, between the roar of battle and the repose of
peace. The theology is the same, including the most characteristic features of
Christology and soteriology.579 By no other apostle is Christ called the Logos. The Gospel is,
"the Apocalypse spiritualized," or idealized. Even the difference of
style, which is startling at first sight, disappears on closer inspection. The
Greek of the Apocalypse is the most Hebraizing of all the books of the New
Testament, as may be expected from its close affinity with Hebrew prophecy to
which the classical Greek furnished no parallel, while the Greek of the fourth
Gospel is pure, and free from irregularities; yet after all John the Evangelist
also shows the greatest familiarity with, and the deepest insight into, the
Hebrew religion, and preserves its purest and noblest elements; and his style
has all the childlike simplicity and sententious brevity of the Old Testament;
it is only a Greek body inspired by a Hebrew soul.580

In accounting for the difference
between the Apocalypse and the other writings of John, we must also take into
consideration the necessary difference between prophetic composition under
direct inspiration, and historical and didactic composition, and the
intervening time of about twenty years; the Apocalypse being written before the
destruction of Jerusalem, the fourth Gospel towards the close of the first
century, in extreme old age, when his youth was renewed like the eagle's, as in
the case of some of the greatest poets, Homer, Sophocles, Milton, and Goethe.

Notes.

I. The Son of Thunder and the Apostle of Love.

I quote some excellent remarks
on the character of John from my friend, Dr. Godet
(Com. I. 35, English translation by Crombie and Cusin):

"How are we to explain two
features of character apparently so opposite?
There exist profound receptive natures which are accustomed to shut up
their impressions within themselves, and this all the more that these
impressions are keen and thrilling. But if it happens that these persons once
cease to be masters of themselves, their long-restrained emotions then burst
forth in sudden explosions, which fill the persons around them with amazement.
Does not the character of John belong to this order? And when Jesus gave to him and his brother the surname of Boanerges,
sons of thunder (Mark 3:17), could he have described them better? I cannot think that, by that surname, Jesus
intended, as all the old writers have believed, to signalize the eloquence
which distinguished them. Neither can I allow that he desired by that surname
to perpetuate the recollection of their anger in one of the cases indicated. We
are led by what precedes to a more natural explanation, and one more worthy of
Jesus himself. As electricity is stored up by degrees in the cloud until it bursts
forth suddenly in the lightning and thunderbolt, so in those two loving and
passionate natures impressions silently accumulated till the moment when the
heart overflowed, and they took an unexpected and violent flight. We love to
represent St. John to ourselves as of a gentle rather than of an energetic
nature, tender even to weakness. Do not his writings insist before and above
all else upon love? Were not the last
sermons of the old man 'Love one another?'
That is true; but we forget other features of a different kind, during
the first and last periods of his life, which reveal something decisive, sharp,
absolute, even violent in his disposition. If we take all the facts stated into
consideration, we shall recognize in him one of those sensitive, ardent souls,
worshippers of an ideal, who attach themselves at first sight, and without
reservation, to that being who seems to them to realize that of which they have
dreamt, and whose devotion easily becomes exclusive and intolerant. They feel
themselves repelled by everything which is not in sympathy with their
enthusiasm. They no longer understand a division of heart which they themselves
know not how to practice. All for all! such is their motto. Where that all is
not, there is in their eyes nothing. Such affections do not subsist without
including an alloy of impure egoism. A divine work is needed, in order that the
true devotion, which constitutes the basis of such, may shine forth at the last
in all its sublimity. Such was, if we are not deceived, the inmost history of
John." Comp. the third French ed. of Godet's Com., I. p. 50.

Dr. Westcott (in his Com.,
p. xxxiii.): "John knew that to be with Christ was life, to reject Christ
was death; and he did not shrink from expressing the thought in the spirit of
the old dispensation. He learned from the Lord, as time went on, a more
faithful patience, but he did not unlearn the burning devotion which consumed
him. To the last, words of awful warning, like the thunderings about the
throne, reveal the presence of that secret fire. Every page of the Apocalypse
is inspired with the cry of the souls beneath the altar, 'How long' (Rev.
6:10); and nowhere is error as to the person of Christ denounced more sternly
than in his Epistles (2 John 10; 1 John 4:1ff.)." Similar passages in
Stanley.

II. The Mission of John.

Dean Stanley (Sermons and Essays on the Apost. Age, p. 249
sq., 3d ed.): "Above all John spoke of the union of the soul with God, but
it was by no mere process of oriental contemplation, or mystic absorption; it
was by that word which now for the first time took its proper place in the
order of the world—by Love. It
has been reserved for St. Paul to proclaim that the deepest principle in the
heart of man was Faith; it was reserved for St. John to proclaim that the
essential attribute of God is Love. It had been taught by the Old Testament
that 'the beginning of wisdom was the fear of God;' it remained to be taught by
the last apostle of the New Testament that 'the end of wisdom was the love of
God.' It had been taught of old time by
Jew and by heathen, by Greek philosophy and Eastern religion, that the Divinity
was well pleased with the sacrifices, the speculations, the tortures of man; it
was to St. John that it was left to teach in all its fulness that the one sign
of God's children is 'the love of the brethren.' And as it is Love that pervades our whole conception of his
teaching, so also it pervades our whole conception of his character. We see
him—it surely is no unwarranted fancy—we see him declining with the declining
century; every sense and faculty waxing feebler, but that one divinest faculty
of all burning more and more brightly; we see it breathing through every look
and gesture; the one animating principle of the atmosphere in which he lives
and moves; earth and heaven, the past, the present, and the future alike
echoing to him that dying strain of his latest words, 'We love Him because He
loved us.' And when at last he
disappears from our view in the last pages of the sacred volume, ecclesiastical
tradition still lingers in the close: and in that touching story, not the less
impressive because so familiar to us, we see the aged apostle borne in the arms
of his disciples into the Ephesian assembly, and there repeating over and over
again the same saying, 'Little children, love one another;' till, when asked
why he said this and nothing else, he replied in those well known words, fit
indeed to be the farewell speech of the Beloved Disciple, 'Because this is our
Lord's command and if you fulfil this, nothing else is needed.' "

§ 42. Apostolic Labors of John.

John in
the Acts.

In the first stadium of
Apostolic Christianity John figures as one of the three pillars of the church
of the circumcision, together with Peter and James the brother of the Lord;
while Paul and Barnabas represented the Gentile church.581 This seems to imply that at that time he had not yet risen to the
full apprehension of the universalism and freedom of the gospel. But he was the
most liberal of the three, standing between James and Peter on the one hand,
and Paul on the other, and looking already towards a reconciliation of Jewish
and Gentile Christianity. The Judaizers never appealed to him as they did to
James, or to Peter.582 There is no
trace of a Johannean party, as there is of a Cephas party and a party of James.
He stood above strife and division.

In the earlier chapters of the
Acts he appears, next to Peter, as the chief apostle of the new religion; he
heals with him the cripple at the gate of the temple; he was brought with him
before the Sanhedrin to bear witness to Christ; he is sent with him by the
apostles from Jerusalem to Samaria to confirm the Christian converts by
imparting to them the Holy Spirit; he returned with him to Jerusalem.583 But Peter is always named first and takes the lead in word and
act; John follows in mysterious silence and makes the impression of a reserved
force which will manifest itself at some future time. He must have been present
at the conference of the apostles in Jerusalem, a.d. 50, but he made no speech and took no active part in the
great discussion about circumcision and the terms of church membership.584 All this is in entire keeping with the character of modest and
silent prominence given to him in the Gospels.

After the year 50 he seems to
have left Jerusalem. The Acts no more mention him nor Peter. When Paul made his
fifth and last visit to the holy City (a.d.
58) he met James, but none of the apostles.585

John at
Ephesus.

The later and most important
labors of John are contained in his writings, which we shall fully consider in
another chapter. They exhibit to us a history that is almost exclusively inward
and spiritual, but of immeasurable reach and import. They make no allusion to
the time and place of residence and composition. But the Apocalypse implies
that he stood at the head of the churches of Asia Minor.586 This is confirmed by the unanimous testimony of antiquity which
is above all reasonable doubt, and assigns Ephesus to him as the residence of
his latter years.587 He died there
in extreme old age during the reign of Trajan, which began in 98. His grave
also was shown there in the second century.

We do not know when he removed
to Asia Minor, but he cannot have done so before the year 63. For in his
valedictory address to the Ephesian elders, and in his Epistles to the
Ephesians and Colossians and the second to Timothy, Paul makes no allusion to
John, and speaks with the authority of a superintendent of the churches of Asia
Minor. It was probably the martyrdom of Peter and Paul that induced John to
take charge of the orphan churches, exposed to serious dangers and trials.588

Ephesus, the capital of
proconsular Asia, was a centre of Grecian culture, commerce, and religion;
famous of old for the songs of Homer, Anacreon, and Mimnermus, the philosophy
of Thales, Anaximenes, and Anaximander, the worship and wonderful temple of
Diana. There Paul had labored three years (54-57) and established an
influential church, a beacon-light in the surrounding darkness of heathenism.
From there he could best commune with the numerous churches he had planted in
the provinces. There he experienced peculiar joys and trials, and foresaw great
dangers of heresies that should spring up from within.589 All the forces of orthodox and heretical Christianity were
collected there. Jerusalem was approaching its downfall; Rome was not yet a
second Jerusalem. Ephesus, by the labors of Paul and of John, became the chief
theatre of church history in the second half of the first and during the
greater part of the second century. Polycarp, the patriarchal martyr, and
Irenaeus, the leading theologian in the conflict with Gnosticism, best
represent the spirit of John and bear testimony to his influence. He alone
could complete the work of Paul and Peter, and give the church that compact
unity which she needed for her self-preservation against persecution from
without and heresy and corruption from within.

If it were not for the writings
of John the last thirty years of the first century would be almost an entire
blank. They resemble that mysterious period of forty days between the
resurrection and the ascension, when the Lord hovered, as it were, between
heaven and earth, barely touching the earth beneath, and appearing to the
disciples like a spirit from the other world. But the theology of the second
and third centuries evidently presupposes the writings of John, and starts from
his Christology rather than from Paul's anthropology and soteriology, which
were almost buried out of sight until Augustin, in Africa, revived them.

John at
Patmos.

John was banished to the
solitary, rocky, and barren island of Patmos (now Patmo or Palmosa), in the
Aegean sea, southwest of Ephesus. This rests on the testimony of the
Apocalypse, 1:9, as usually understood: "I, John, your brother and
partaker with you in the tribulation and kingdom and patience in Jesus, was in
the isle that is called Patmos, for (on account of) the word of God and the
testimony of Jesus."590 There he
received, while "in the spirit, on the Lord's day," those wonderful
revelations concerning the struggles and victories of Christianity.

The fact of his banishment to
Patmos is confirmed by the unanimous testimony of antiquity.591 It is perpetuated in the traditions of the island, which has no
other significance. "John—that is the thought of Patmos; the island
belongs to him; it is his sanctuary. Its stones preach of him, and in every heart,
he lives."592

The time of the exile is uncertain,
and depends upon the disputed question of the date of the Apocalypse. External
evidence points to the reign of Domitian, a.d.
95; internal evidence to the reign of Nero, or soon after his death, a.d. 68.

The prevailing—we may say the
only distinct tradition, beginning with so respectable a witness as Irenaeus
about 170, assigns the exile to the end of the reign of Domitian, who ruled
from 81 to 96.593 He was the
second Roman emperor who persecuted Christianity, and banishment was one of his
favorite modes of punishment.594 Both facts give support to this tradition. After a promising
beginning he became as cruel and bloodthirsty as Nero, and surpassed him in
hypocrisy and blasphemous self-deification. He began his letters: "Our
Lord and God commands," and required his subjects to address him so.595 He ordered gold and silver statues of himself to be placed in the
holiest place of the temples. When he seemed most friendly, he was most
dangerous. He spared neither senators nor consuls when they fell under his dark
suspicion, or stood in the way of his ambition. He searched for the descendants
of David and the kinsmen of Jesus, fearing their aspirations, but found that
they were poor and innocent persons.596 Many Christians suffered martyrdom under his reign, on the charge
of atheism—among them his own cousin, Flavius Clemens, of consular dignity, who
was put to death, and his wife Domitilla, who was banished to the island of
Pandateria, near Naples.597 In favor of the
traditional date may also be urged an intrinsic propriety that the book which
closes the canon, and treats of the last things till the final consummation,
should have been written last.

Nevertheless, the internal
evidence of the Apocalypse itself, and a comparison with the fourth Gospel,
favor an earlier date, before the destruction of Jerusalem, and during the
interregnum which followed the death of Nero (68), when the beast, that is the
Roman empire, was wounded, but was soon to be revived (by the accession of
Vespasian). If there is some foundation for the early tradition of the intended
oil-martyrdom of John at Rome, or at Ephesus, it would naturally point to the
Neronian persecution, in which Christians were covered with inflammable
material and burned as torches. The unmistakable allusions to imperial
persecutions apply much better to Nero than to Domitian. The difference between
the Hebrew coloring and fiery vigor of the Apocalypse and the pure Greek and
calm repose of the fourth Gospel, to which we have already alluded, are more
easily explained if the former was written some twenty years earlier. This view
has some slight support in ancient tradition,598 and has been adopted by the
majority of modern critical historians and commentators.599

We hold, then, as the most probable
view, that John was exiled to Patmos under Nero, wrote the Apocalypse soon
after Nero's death, a.d. 68 or
69, returned to Ephesus, completed his Gospel and Epistles several (perhaps
twenty) years later, and fell asleep in peace during the year of Trajan, after a.d. 98.

The faithful record of the
historical Christ in the whole fulness of his divine-human person, as the
embodiment and source of life eternal to all believers, with the accompanying
epistle of practical application, was the last message of the Beloved Disciple
at the threshold of the second century, at the golden sunset of the apostolic
age. The recollections of his youth, ripened by long experience, transfigured
by the Holy Spirit, and radiant with heavenly light of truth and holiness, are
the most precious legacy of the last of the apostles to all future generations
of the church.

The memory of John sank deep
into the heart of the church, and not a few incidents more or less
characteristic and probable have been preserved by the early fathers.

Clement of Alexandria, towards
the close of the second century, represents John as a faithful and devoted
pastor when, in his old age, on a tour of visitation, he lovingly pursued one
of his former converts who had become a robber, and reclaimed him to the
church.

Irenaeus bears testimony to his
character as "the Son of Thunder" when he relates, as from the lips
of Polycarp, that, on meeting in a public bath at Ephesus the Gnostic heretic
Cerinthus,601 who denied the incarnation of our Lord, John refused to
remain under the same roof, lest it might fall down. This reminds one of the
incident recorded in Luke 9:49, and the apostle's severe warning in 2 John 10
and 11. The story exemplifies the possibility of uniting the deepest love of
truth with the sternest denunciation of error and moral evil.602

Jerome pictures him as the
disciple of love, who in his extreme old age was carried to the meeting-place
on the arms of his disciples, and repeated again and again the exhortation,
"Little children, love one another," adding: "This is the Lord's
command, and if this alone be done, it is enough." This, of all the
traditions of John, is the most credible and the most useful.

In the Greek church John bears
the epithet "the theologian (qeolovgo"), for teaching most clearly the
divinity of Christ (th;n qeovthta tou' lovgou). He is also called "the
virgin" (parqevno"),603 for his chastity and supposed
celibacy. Augustin says that the singular chastity of John from his early youth
was supposed by some to be the ground of his intimacy with Jesus.604

The story of John and the
huntsman, related by Cassian, a monk of the fifth century, represents him as
gently playing with a partridge in his hand, and saying to a huntsman, who was
surprised at it: "Let not this brief and slight relaxation of my mind
offend thee, without which the spirit would flag from over-exertion and not be
able to respond to the call of duty when need required." Childlike simplicity
and playfulness are often combined with true greatness of mind.

Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus,
at the close of the second century, relates (according to Eusebius) that John
introduced in Asia Minor the Jewish practice of observing Easter on the 14th of
Nisan, irrespective of Sunday. This fact entered largely into the paschal
controversies of the second century, and into the modern controversy about the
genuineness of the Gospel of John.

The same Polycrates of Ephesus
describes John as wearing the plate, or diadem of the Jewish high-priest (Ex.
28:36, 37; 39:30, 31). It is probably a figurative expression of priestly
holiness which John attaches to all true believers (Comp. Rev. 2:17), but in
which he excelled as the patriarch.605

From a misunderstanding of the
enigmatical word of Jesus, John 21:22, arose the legend that John was only
asleep in his grave, gently moving the mound as he breathed, and awaiting the
final advent of the Lord. According to another form of the legend he died, but
was immediately raised and translated to heaven, like Elijah, to return with
him as the herald of the second advent of Christ.606

*Schaff, Philip, History of
the Christian Church, (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc.) 1997.
This material has been carefully compared, corrected¸ and emended (according to
the 1910 edition of Charles Scribner's Sons) by The Electronic Bible Society,
Dallas, TX, 1998.

559 John 21:22, 23. Milligan and Moulton in loc. The
point of contrast between the words spoken respectively to Peter and John, is
not that between a violent death by martyrdom and a peaceful departure; but
that between impetuous and struggling apostleship, ending in a violent death,
and quiet, thoughtful, meditative waiting for the Second Coming of Jesus,
ending in a peaceful transition to the heavenly repose. Neither Peter nor
himself is to the Evangelist a mere individual. Each is a type of one aspect of
apostolic working—of Christian witnessing for Jesus to the very end of
time."

562 The name John, from the Hebrew @n:jwO;hyÒ or @n:h;w?y,
i.e., Jehovah is gracious (comp. the German Gotthold), implied to
his mind a prophecy of his relation to Jesus, the incarnate Jehovah (comp. John
12:41 with Isa. 6:1), and is equivalent to "the disciple whom Jesus
loved," John 13:23; 19:26; 20:2; 21:7, 20. The Greek fathers call John oJ ejpisthvqio", the leaner on the bosom, or, as we would say, the bosom-friend (of
Jesus).

563 Mark 1:20; 15: 40 sq.; Luke 8:3; John 19:27. Godet (I. 37) thinks
that his home was on the lake of Gennesareth, and accounts thus for his absence
in Jerusalem at Paul's first visit (Gal. 1:18, 19).

564 According to the correct interpretation of John 19:25, that four
woman (not three) are meant there, as Wieseler, Ewald, Meyer., Lange, and other
commentators now hold. The writer of the Fourth Gospel, from peculiar delicacy,
never mentions his own name, nor the name of his mother, nor the name of the
mother of our Lord; yet his mother was certainly at the cross, according to the
Synoptists, and he would not omit her.

569 For an ingenious comparison between John and Salome, John and
James, John and Andrew, John and Peter, John and Paul, see Lange's Com on
John, pp. 4-10 (Am. ed.).

570 Mark 3:17. Boanhrgev" (as Lachmann, Tischendorf, and
Tregelles read, in. of Gr. Boanergev"), ie.,uiJoi; bronth'". The word is usually derived from vg,r, ynEB] (as pronounced in the broad Galilean dialect). vg,r, means a noisy crowd of men, but may have had the
significance of thunder in Syriac. Robinson derives it from zg,ro which means tumult, alarm, and is used of the roaring noise
of thunder, Job 37:2. The usual Hebrew word for thunder is r;['m (Ps. 77:19; 81:8; Job 26:14).
This name completely dispels the popular notion of John. "Nichts,"says
Hilgenfeld (Einleit., p. 393), "stimmt zu
den synoptischen Evangelien weniger als jenes mädchenhafte Johannesbild,
welches unter uns gangbar geworden ist."Comp. Godet's remarks at the close of this
section.

572 Luke 9:4-56. Some commentators
think that this incident suggested the giving of the name Boanerges; but that
would make it an epithet of censure, which the Lord would certainly not fasten
upon his beloved disciple.

578 The author of Supernat. Relig., II.400, says: "Instead
of the fierce and intolerant spirit of the Son of Thunder, we find [in the
Fourth Gospel] a spirit breathing forth nothing but gentleness and love."
How superficial this judgment is appears from our text.

580 In this way the opposite views
of two eminent Hebrew scholars and judges of style may be reconciled. While
Renan, looking at the surface, says of the fourth Gospel: "John's style
has nothing Hebrew, nothing Jewish, nothing Talmudic," Ewald, on the contrary,
penetrating to the core, remarks: "In its true spirit and afflatus, no
language can be more genuinely Hebrew than that of John." Godet agrees
with Ewald when he says: "The dress only is Greek, the body is
Hebrew."

581 Gal. 2:9, jIavkwbo", kai; Khfa'" kai; jIwavnnh", oij dokou'nte"
stu'loi ei|nai ... aujtoi; eij" th;n peritomhvn. They are named in the order of
their conservatism.

584 He is included among the
"apostles," assembled in Jerusalem on that occasion, Acts 15:6, 22,
23, and is expressly mentioned as one of the three pillar-apostles by Paul in
the second chapter of the Galatians, which refers to the same conference.

585 Acts 21:18. John may have been,
however, still in Palestine, perhaps in Galilee, among the scenes of his youth.
According to tradition he remained in Jerusalem till the death of the Holy
Virgin, about a.d. 48.

586 Rev. 1:4, 9, 11, 20; 2 and 3. It
is very evident that only an apostle could occupy such a position, and not an
obscure presbyter of that name, whose very existence is doubtful.

587 Irenaeus, the disciple of
Polycarp (a personal pupil of John), Adv. Haer. III. 1, 1; 3, 4; II. 22,
5, etc., and in his letter to Florinus (in Eusebius, H. E. V.
20); Clemens Alex., Quis dives salvetur, c.42; Apollonius and
Polycrates, at the close of the second century, in Euseb. H. E. III. 31;
V. 18, 24; Origen, Tertullian, Eusebius, Jerome, etc. Leucius, also, the
reputed author of the Acts of John about 130, in the fragments recently
published by Zahn, bears witness to the residence of John in Ephesus and
Patmos, and transfers his martyrdom from Rome to Ephesus. Lützelberger, Keim (Leben
Jesu v. Nazara, I. 161 sq.), Holtzmann, Scholten, the author of Supernatural
Religion, (II. 410), and other opponents of the Gospel of John, have dared
to remove him out of Asia Minor with negative arguments from the silence of the
Acts, the Ephesians, Colossians, Papias, Ignatius, and Polycarp, arguments
which either prove nothing at all, or only that John was not in Ephesus before
63. But the old tradition has been conclusively defended not only by Ewald,
Grimm, Steitz, Riggenbach, Luthardt, Godet, Weiss, but even by Krenkel,
Hilgenfeld (Einleitung, pp. 395 sqq.), and Weizsäcker (498 sqq.), of the
Tübingen school.

588 "The maintenance of evangelical truth," says Godet (I.
42), "demanded at that moment powerful aid. It is not surprising then that
John, one of the last survivors amongst the apostles, should feel himself
called upon to supply in those countries the place of the apostle of the
Gentiles, and to water, as Apollos had formerly done in Greece, that which Paul
had planted." Pressensé (Apost. Era, p. 424): "No city could
have been better chosen as a centre from which to watch over the churches, and
follow closely the progress of heresy. At Ephesus John was in the centre of
Paul's mission field, and not far from Greece."

589 See his farewell address at Miletus, Acts 20:29, 30, and the
Epistles to Timothy.

590 Bleek understands diav of the object: John was carried
(in a vision) to Patmos for the purpose of receiving there the
revelation of Christ He derives the whole tradition of John's banishment to
Patmos from a misunderstanding of this passage. So also Lücke, De Wette, Reuss,
and Düsterdieck. But the traditional exegesis is confirmed by the mention of
the qlivyi", basileiva and uJpomonhv in
the same verse, by the natural meaning of marturiva,
and by the parallel passages Rev. 6:9 and 20:4, where diav likewise
indicates the occasion or reason of suffering.

592 Tischendorf,
Reise in's Morgenland, II.257 sq. A grotto on a hill in the southern
part of the island is still pointed out as the place of the apocalyptic vision,
and on the summit of the mountain is the monastery of St. John, with a library
of about 250 manuscripts.

593 Irenaeus,
Adv. Haer., V. 30, says that the Apocalypse was seen pro;" tw/' tevlei th'" Dometianou'
ajrch'". So
also Eusebius, H. E. III. 18, 20, 33; Chron. ad ann. 14
Domitiani; and Jerome, De vir. illustr., c. 9. This view has prevailed
among commentators and historians till quite recently, and is advocated by
Hengstenberg, Lange, Ebrard (and by myself in the Hist. of the Ap. Ch., §
101, pp. 400 sqq.). It is indeed difficult to set aside the clear testimony of
Irenaeus, who, through Polycarp, was connected with the very age of John. But
we must remember that he was mistaken even on more important points of history,
as the age of Jesus, which he asserts, with an appeal to tradition, to have
been above fifty years.

594 Tacitus congratulates Agricola (Vita Agr., c. 44) that he
did not live to see under this emperor "tot consularium caedes, tot
nobilissimarum feminarum exilia et fugas." Agricola, whose daughter
Tacitus married, died in 93, two years before Domitian.

598 So
the title of the Syriac translation of the Apocalypse (which, however, is of
much later date than the Peshitto, which omits the Apocalypse): "Revelatio
quam Deus Joanni Evangelistae in Patmo insula dedit, in quam a Nerone Caesare
relegatus fuerat."Clement of Alexandria (Quis dives salv., c.
42, and quoted by Eusebius, III., 23) says indefinitely that John returned
from Patmos to Ephesus after the death of "the tyrant" (tou' turavnnou teleuthvsanto"), which may apply to Nero as
well as to Domitian. Origen mentions simply a Roman basileuv".
Tertullian's legend of the Roman oil-martyrdom of John seems to point to Nero
rather than to any other emperor, and was so understood by Jerome (Adv.
Jovin. I. 26), although Tertullian does not say so, and Jerome himself
assigns the exile and the composition of the Apocalypse to the reign of
Domitian (De vir. ill., c. 9). Epiphanius (Haer. LI. 33) puts the
banishment back to the reign of Claudius (a.d.
41-53), which is evidently much too early.

602 Stanley mentions, as an illustration of the magnifying influence
of fancy, that Jeremy Taylor, in relating this story, adds that
"immediately upon the retreat of the apostle the bath fell down and
crushed Cerinthus in the ruins" (Life of Christ, Sect. xii. 2).

603 parqevno" usually means a virgin (Matt.
1:23; Luke 1:27; Acts 21:9; 1 Cor. 7:25; 28, 34), but is applied also to men
who never touched women, Apoc. 14:4, and in patristic writers.

605 In Euseb. H. E. III. 31,
3; V. 24, 3: jIwavnnh" ...o}"
ejgennhvqh iJereu" to; pevtalon peforhkw;" kai;mavrtu"
kai; didavskalo" ou|to" ejn Efevsw, kekoivmhtai. Epiphanius reports (no doubt
from Hegesippus) the same, with some ascetic features, of James the brother of
the Lord. See Stanley's remarks, pp. 276-278, and Lightfoot on Galat., p.
345 note, and Philipp. p. 252. "As a figurative expression,"
says Lightfoot, "or as a literal fact, the notice points to St. John as
the veteran teacher, the chief representative, of a pontifical race. On the
other hand, it is possible that this was not the sense which Polycrates himself
attached to the figure or the fact; and if so, we have here perhaps the
earliest passage in any extant Christian writing where the sacerdotal view of
the ministry is distinctly put forward." But in the Didache (ch. 13) the
Christian prophets are called "high priests."